Review: Together

Image courtesy of Bleecker Street Media.

You know that couple everyone avoids at social gatherings because they always bring drama and, if you're not careful, they'll somehow rope you into it? Sure you do. Now imagine spending the COVID-19 pandemic stuck in a house with them and their silent child. 

To be fair, director Stephen Daldry - who previously was responsible for such solid movies as "Billy Elliot" and "The Hours" - whittles down the pandemic to about 90 minutes, but it's more than enough time to spend with the characters named He (James McAvoy) and She (Sharon Horgan), and the film often feels like it lasts longer than it does.

The filmmakers make a few major mistakes: For starters, the film feels incredibly stagey and there's little in the way of camera movement. Much of the picture is a series of static shots in which the two leads - who do as best they can with the screenplay and characters they've been handed - deliver lengthy monologues, tirades, whatever you want to call them.

Worse, the entire film is like an extended therapy session in which the bickering couple - who hated each other before the pandemic, and their anger toward each other is exacerbated while being cooped up inside for a year - break the fourth wall and talk directly to the audience. For the entire film. Most of the film is them sniping at each other and, occasionally, shouting over each other.

She is an apparent liberal who works with the needy, while she accuses him of being a Tory. Whether he is is never uncovered, however, he's the type of capitalist who thinks because he pulled himself up by his bootstraps from humble beginnings and has accumulated some wealth that he is somebody special. There's an early scene in which he brags about insulting a grocery store worker because she refuses to sell him some vegetables that might have come into contact with a COVID-19-infected person.

Of course, as the film goes on, the characters begin to show some subtle changes, although the one constant is the bickering. There's a real change of heart for one character that occurs late in the film, but while it's welcome, it doesn't exactly feel organic. 

There's at least one scene that's fairly powerful involving the parent of one of the couple catching and dying from COVID-19, and the two actors handle that difficult moment with aplomb. Unfortunately, it's followed shortly thereafter by one of the film's worst scenes - a sequence in which one of the characters, as usual talking directly to the camera, delivers a lengthy monologue on how poorly Britain handled the pandemic, and the scene plays like a TED Talk, often feeling like a sequence in which someone explains to you just how seriously you are not taking COVID-19... as if anyone they'd need to reach would be watching this film.

There are a few moments of levity and a scene in which the characters discuss their relationship in refreshingly frank terms late in the picture. But by then, it's too late. "Together" is like being stuck with two somewhat annoying people as they dissect their tattered relationship for you - without you, of course, being able to get a word in edgewise - and nothing that is said is particularly enlightening. There are, I'm sure, good movies to be made about the claustrophobic effect the pandemic had on people stuck inside the house around the world. But this ain't it.